


Ghosts

by Rae_Saxon



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio), Doctor Who: Eighth Doctor Adventures - Various Authors
Genre: Because I needed some fix-it, I just ignore Dark Eyes okay, It's meant to heal broken hearts, M/M, Post S4 finale of EDAs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-26 06:04:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20737430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rae_Saxon/pseuds/Rae_Saxon
Summary: The Doctor lives with a ghost in his TARDIS. Charley is not amused, Lucie gives him a cute name and the Master... well, the Master really misses having a body.





	Ghosts

The first time it happened... Well, let's just say, Charley was not amused. The Doctor had followed her screaming through the endless aisles of his TARDIS into her private little bathroom, then stared at the mirror in... well, mild surprise, to be perfectly honest.

So, someone had written words on his bathroom mirror, someone, who, judging by Charley's shocked expression, wasn't her. He should be worried, to say the least, but considering the comment was nothing but a plain and simple “You might want to tug in that shirt” .... Well, it wasn't exactly _scary_, was it?

“They're right, you know,” he remarked with a little sheepish grin towards Charley. “It might look better tugged in.”

“Oh, what do you know!” Charley had uttered and left the bathroom with a bang of the door.

The Doctor shrugged towards the mirror.

“She's a bit touchy when it comes to fashion.”

But nothing but his own grinning face replied. He wiped the letters away – Just in case he wanted to talk to Charley ever again – and followed her out.

“Aren't you going to do anything about it?” She was just babbling in quick, flustered tone. “These letters, they just appeared out of nothing. On the mirror right in front of me. Like... like there's a ghost spooking around or something.”

The Doctor noticed she had tugged her shirt in.

Ha.

“Aw, come on,” he tried to reason with Charley, suppressing a laugh. “What's harm is a ghost giving fashion advice, huh? It'll bring a little life into my old TARDIS.”

She looked at him like he had just announced that Daleks were cute.

~

The second time, Charley was standing at his bed at night (or whatever night one could have in the vortex, falling asleep in exhaustion after a rather eventful trip all throughout the universe). She was completely upset, tears in her eyes, but her lips pinched together in obvious determination not to cry.

The Doctor was alarmed immediately.

“What is it, what's wrong?”

He jumped out of the bed, revealing a rather embarrassing pyjama, which Charley merely commented with a single raised eyebrow.

That's when he knew things were serious.

“It's the... the... ghost...,” Charley brought out, her face pale in the little light of the room coming from his... so he had a night lamp, alright? Nothing wrong with that. “It... it kept on rattling on door, making it fall shut and open again all the time and then... then I wanted to grab my phone, make some light and it... it just moved... away from my hand. Doctor, you need to _do_ something!”

“Do something?” he asked, his voice getting high. “What am I supposed to do against a ghost? I don't even _believe_ in ghosts!”

“What else can it be then?” Charley asked energetically, and the Doctor sighed.

“Residual energy of a dying soul, maybe? A very strong willed mind keeping their soul present in reality? But...”  
  
“That sounds a lot like a ghost to me, you know?”

“Yes, well, maybe a little. But...”

“You need to _do_ something!”

“There's nothing I _can_ do, really, Charley. It'll just disappear in time. The energy will fade and we'll have our peaceful TARDIS again.”

“And until then we just live with a ghost? What if it's dangerous? Where is it coming from anyway? Did anyone die in here, Doctor?”

“Don't worry about it, Charley, I promise you, he's not dangerous at all. He can barely interact with the reality of things and...”

Charley frowned and he knew immediately he had said something wrong.

“What? What is it?”

“_He_?”

The Doctor's shoulders sacked.

“Go to bed, Charley. I promise, you're safe. Don't let _it_ pull on your blanket.”

She gave him a look of sheer terror, as he gently pushed her back into her bedroom.

With a sigh, the Doctor re-entered his own room. Just before he was about to close the door, he noticed in the light from the passageway words shining on his mirror in red.

_“Nice PJs.”_

Yeah, the Doctor thought tiredly, to be expected.

He was fairly sure he felt someone tug on his blanket when he went to bed. Here's a thought – Never give your local ghost ideas.

~

Lucie took the whole thing far better. Maybe a little... too well.

“Can we give it a name? How does Bob sound? Hmmm? Or Bobby, so it can be a girl or a guy. Do you know its gender? Maybe it's a non-binary ghost, Bobby still works for non-binaries, I think?”

“Ah,” the Doctor suppressed a laugh. “Quite. I'm sure they'll love Bobby.”

The cup of cold tea standing next to him on the table suddenly dropped to the floor and fell into hundreds of pieces. Lucie jumped out of the way with a little shriek, while the Doctor merely commented it with a tired grin.

“Or, you know, maybe not.”

“Wow,” Lucie laughed. “You really _do_ have a ghost. That's so cool!”

The Doctor turned away from the consoles, looking down on shards lying on the floor.

“You'd think so, wouldn't you? But that was my favourite cup.”

~

“I don't think Bobby likes me much,” Lucie commented one day, standing in front of the Doctor with a dark glare on her face. He watched the hood on her sweatshirt go up onto her head whenever she pulled it down.

The Doctor snorted.

“Well, it could have something to do with your insistence of you calling him Bobby.”

Though, in all fairness, the Doctor suspected it had more to do with her general _existence_.

“Him? Oh, it's a he, is it? You know who it is, don't you?”

“Lucie...”

“Well? Do you?”

The Doctor sighed.

“Yeah. He was... is... was...” He shook his head. “He's a Time Lord, like me. Fell into the source that's powering my TARDIS. I tried helping him but he... was never the best at accepting help.”

“And now he's haunting your TARDIS? Bit ungrateful, isn't he?”

The Doctor shrugged. “Bit of it was my fault, I suspect. Most of it his own, though.”

Lucie looked a tad disappointed.

“So his name... is not Bobby, I take it?”

With a laugh, the Doctor grabbed her hood and pulled it over her head.

“You know, the name's beginning to grow on me and it's definitely better than the one he actually chose so... just stick with it.”

~

“Are you there?” he asked, one dark, dark night, after having had listened to the audio Lucie had left him for what felt like the 1000th time, sitting on the cold gratings of the TARDIS console room, waiting for one sort of the pain to replace the other. “Listen, I'm sorry about the whole Bobby thing. You can't possibly be mad about that, not right now... Not even you are this petty. Please. Just tell me you're here.”

But there was nothing. Not a sound but the motor of his beloved – and so so empty – TARDIS humming.

“I could really need you right now. Lucie she's... but I suppose you already figured that out, didn't you? And let me guess. You don't care. Hah... I never did understand how you do that sort of thing. Not caring. I never got the hang of it. Is it difficult?”

No answer.

Of course not.

“I might try, you know. I might not. I told Susan that I'm thinking about just getting her back. Crossing our own timelines. Maybe I am. I don't know any more. Nothing makes sense without her, Master. Everything I did... everything I tried in this body, was keeping up hope, never giving up, always fighting for what's right, but I messed it all up and I lost her. I couldn't save her. How could I not save the one person that mattered... again.”

Silence.

“Couldn't save you either, could I? Let you ghost through my TARDIS like it somehow made it less real, like you're somehow still with me, like you're not gone, but you are and it's my fault... I don't know what to do. Do I go back? But if I go back for her, how could I possibly forgive myself for it? And if I go back for her... where do I stop? Where do I draw the line? Who else would I _not_ go back for?”

The Doctor played with the tape recorder in his hands, turning it around again and again, waiting for an answer he knew wouldn't come. Now, when he needed him, his ghost had fallen silent.

“Who would you break the laws of time for, I wonder? No one and everyone, I imagine, because what do you care about the laws of time. That's why I liked having you around, you know? As a reminder that I need to care. Well. That and your impeccable humour.”

A tired, weak grin spread on his face, only to extinguish again almost immediately.

“But you're not around any more. Have you finally faded? I didn't mean it, you know? I didn't really want you to... leave. Maybe that's it. No more ghost Master. No more... anyone. Nothing but the ghosts living inside my hearts. Far too many now.”

He got up with a heavy sigh, his whole body aching from having sat on the floor in the dark for so long. No one was tugging on his blanket when he pulled it over himself. The same, dusted-in words were still on his mirror, which he hadn't managed to clean yet.

He curled up on his side, took the tape recorder and turned it on again, continuing to listen to Lucie's last words to him, just to feel the pain, just to feel anything at all.

But instead of Lucie's message, a men's voice with a thick American accent echoes from the walls of his dark bedroom.

“_Sorry, Doctor. Gotta dash. Getting resurrected. Universes to conquer, plans to make. Love, Bobby.”_

_~_

It took for about a week, when someone knocked on his TARDIS door in the middle of the Vortex. The Doctor merely commented it with a tired shrug and made his way to the console to open it.

Lucie stumbled in, looking surprised and only slightly terrified.

“Just pushed me out onto your doorstep and disappeared again,” she mumbled grumpily, turning around with a glare. “It's really not safe, parking here, has anyone told you?”

With his eyes widened and his hearts beating faster, the Doctor jumped to the doors, but nothing was to be seen. He imagined hearing the faint sound of a TARDIS dematerialising.

“Some bloke with a beard collected me. Said I had urgent matters to attend to and couldn't die just now. So... are you giving us a hug, or what?” she asked after a little while of the Doctor just silently staring at her.

A wide grin spread on his face.

“Lucie Miller!” he laughed, wrapping her up in his arms and whirling her around the console, until she screamed for him to stop. “My Lucie Miller!”

It was a bit of a miracle, really. Of course, one he should absolutely disapprove of, one that might have very well meant the end of the web of time – But the Doctor didn't have any energy left to care. In his head, he still heard his own words, his own question towards the Master echoing.

“_Who would you break the laws of time for?”_


End file.
